Topic: Verizon

The largest carrier in the U.S., Verizon Wireless, began teasing that "something is coming" on the main page of its website on Tuesday, a day before Apple is expected to announce its next-generation iPad.

A flurry of reports have insinuated that the larger upfront subsidies carriers pay to gain access to the iPhone are "not good for wireless carriers," with one blog claiming "carriers hate the iPhone," despite facts indicating the opposite.

How Apple plans to provide content to users of its rumored television set remains unknown, but one Wall Street firm sees four potential ways Apple could approach one of its largest hurdles in bringing a connected television to market, with the most likely option seen as a partnership with existing cable providers.

AT&T announced a significant quarterly loss as a result of a failed T-Mobile takeover and is now adding fewer new customers than rival Verizon Wireless, while Apple extends its charitable matching program to include part-time employees.

T-Mobile CEO Philipp Humm said Tuesday that a frequency band incompatibility issue is the "key reason" keeping the carrier from offering the iPhone, noting that it will be resolved with future chipsets, potentially paving the way for Apple's handset to arrive on its network.

The success of Apple's iPhone on the Verizon Wireless network has resulted in a short-term impact of as much as 6 percent to the carrier's gross margins as it waits to recoup its subsidies for the best-selling handset.

Apple isn't scheduled to report its holiday quarterly sales until January 24, but Verizon Wireless has just noted that it has sold 4.2 million iPhones in the last three months of 2011, double its previous quarterly figure.

Apple came up as a frequent hot topic in business news this year, as evidenced by the fact that eight of the ten most-read corporate articles from The Wall Street Journal in 2011 were about the company and its co-founder Steve Jobs.

Apple has negotiated generous subsidies from mobile carriers to sell iPhones at lower upfront prices, but Google and its Android licensees haven't, leaving carriers such as Verizon to drive up the price of higher end Android phones to make up the difference.